Middle Rising Tone In The Evolution Of Modern Dialect Study

In modern dialects, the evolution of medieval rising tone is quite complicated. Based on the corpus of published representative dialects (including a total of 300 recorded dialects, one of them from my dialect), this paper sorts out the evolution of the rising-tone medieval characters in modern dialects, sums up a number of types, and explores the development characteristics and reasons for changes of the rising-tone medieval characters in modern dialects.This paper mainly consists of four aspects.To start with, according to the classification, this paper categorizes respectively the evolution of medieval characters with the voiced rising tone, those with the semi-voiced rising tone and those with the voiceless rising tone in modern dialects into "Mandarin" type and "non-Mandarin" type. Besides, it discusses the minor categories, characteristics, geographical distribution, differences of tone class among dialects, etc., of each category. In the "Mandarin-type" dialect, the evolution of medieval characters with the voiced rising tone is characterized by the voiced rising tone changed into the falling tone and by the semi-voiced rising tone as well as the voiceless rising tone read with the rising tone. In the "non-Mandarin-type" dialect, the evolution of medieval characters with the voiced rising tone is characterized by the various pronunciations of the voiced rising tone, by the uncertainty in pronouncing the semi-voiced rising tone, and by the voiceless rising tone mostly read with the rising tone.Secondly, the paper makes a preliminary study on the internal and external causes of the evolution of medieval characters with the voiced rising tone in modern dialects. The internal factors include the similarity of tone value, the impact of tone sandhi, initial impact, the impact of vocabulary and grammar as well as of the language. External factors include the impact of immigration and the infiltration of the neighboring dialects.Thirdly, the paper makes a comparison of the development of medieval characters with the voiced rising tone in the relevant dialects, which includes three pairs of dialects, namely, Gan dialects and Hakka dialects, Pinghua dialects and Yue dialects, and Hakka Gan dialects and Yue dialects. The comparison mainly involves the attributes of the tone class and the scope of medieval characters with the voiced rising tone. By comparison we find that the development of characters with the rising tone in the relevant dialects is separate and yet shows a lot of consistency: Gan and Hakka dialects and Pinghua and Yue dialects have their own separate tone class respectively, however, there exists the same tendency of development among them. For example, some of the Gan dialects and most of the Hakka dialects usually have a few characters with the voiced rising tone read with the flat tone, while some of Pinghua dialects and most of the Yue dialects still have quite a few characters with the voiced rising tone read with the lower rising tone. The characters with the voiced rising tone in Gan dialects and Hakka dialects today, characters with the voiced rising tone in Pinghua dialects and Yue dialects, as well as the characters of voiced rising tone in the voiced rising tone still have high consistency despite the fact that they belong to different scopes of characters in general.Fourthly, the paper sums up the evolution characteristics of the rising-tone medieval characters in modern dialects, which consists of three major aspects: (1) The characters have distinct regional characteristics. There are usually different types of evolution of rising-tone characters between Mandarin areas and non-Mandarin areas, as well as between the dialects in Mandarin areas and non-Mandarin areas. To explain it in detail, first of all, in the Mandarin areas, in most cases characters with the voiced rising tone are read with a falling tone and characters with the semi-voiced rising tone are read with the lower rising tone; and in the non-Mandarin areas, the pronunciation of characters with the voiced rising tone is of great diversity, while the pronunciation of characters with the semi-voiced rising tone is uncertain. Secondly, between the dialects in the Mandarin areas, the evolution of the majority of dialects is in line with the regular law, however, there are also some local dialects which diverge from the mainstream, for example, in district with six tones, most of the characters with the voiced rising tone are read with the higher even tone in Tongtai dialect. Last but not least, between the dialects in the non-Mandarin areas, the types of evolution of characters with the rising tone are of great complicity and diversity, for example, the characters with the semi-voiced rising tone are often read with the lower rising tonein Yue dialects, however, they are often read with the lower falling tonein some of the Wu dialects. (2) The characters change gradually in the process of evolution. Specifically speaking, the first aspect is the gradual change of time. Within the same dialect, the evolution of various characters is of various speeds and of different time sequences, which is a gradually evolving process. Be it characters with the voiced rising tone or those with the semi-voiced rising tone, they will not be classified into the corresponding tone class all at once in accordance with the evolutionary laws of phonics in most of the dialects, that is, those with the voiced rising tone are read with the falling tone while those with the semi-voiced rising tone are read with the higher rising tone. In the process of evolution, there will always be the unchanged, the changing, and the changed characters with the rising tone. Both the old and the new pronunciations exist harmoniously without coming into conflict and they are often used in a staggered manner. Next will be the geographical gradient. The change of the characters with the rising tone always starts from certain individual dialects, and gradually extends to other areas and different regions. The change of the characters with the rising tone originated from the Mandarin in the north central plains, so generally speaking, the evolution of the characters with the rising tone gradually extended from Mandarin areas to non-Mandarin areas and from the north to the south. (3) The process of evolution is influenced by many factors. Characters with the rising tone are restricted by many factors, of which there are internal factors within the language system as well as external factors beyond the language system. It is under such influence of a variety of factors that the development of medieval characters with the rising-tone in modern dialects evolves in such a complicated manner.